Unidentified Wiki:Manual of style
Please note: This page is still in the works! Grammar *Proper grammar and spelling are essential to provide a credible article. *Brand names should be capitalized, but not underlined or italicized. *Make sure to use dashes and commas where appropriate. *Avoid using the ampersand (&) unless stated in a quote or brand name, etc. *It is recommended to download the Grammarly plugin for your browser. General *Spell out State and Province names, as opposed to abbreviations. *Similarly, spell out units of weight. *If using the metric system, abbreviations such as "m" should be used, as the words tend to get long. *When listing height in feet and inches, only use an apostrophe to specify the number of feet. **Do not include a "0" if the subject is at an even number of feet/meters tall. *If the postmortem interval and body condition are not known, use "unknown" instead of "not stated". *If the height and weight are not known, use "N/A" instead of "not stated". *Avoid using "to" in regards to a range (such as age). Please use an endash (-) instead. *At this time, this is an only English-language website. **Please use the specific variation of English according to the country a case originates from. **Use "month, day, year" format for American and Canadian cases. **Use "day, month, year" format for British, Australian and non-English speaking countries. Format *The beginning of the article should state the individual’s name (or the article title) in bold text. **If the individual used a different name than what they were born with, specify it in quotation marks after the middle name (if known). *The lifespan of an individual is optional to add following the inclusion of their name in parentheses. *All articles (with the exception of disambiguations) should have an Infobox. **See the "creating a page" guide for additional information. **When adding a notice to the page (after identification, for example), the Infobox will need to be moved to the top of the page. **This is done by dragging the box upward in the visual editor **In source mode, the template can be cut and pasted to appear first. Sections Main sections *"Discovery": describing the circumstances of finding the unidentified person. *"Background": for missing and identified persons which would provide details of their lives before they disappeared or died. **Sometimes, the heading "life prior to disappearance" appears but the section titles should remain short. *“Case”: which details the details of the discovery, disappearance and investigation history. The next three sections should be detailed as a bullet list, to highlight defining information about a currently unidentified or missing person. Resolved cases may state these details in prose, as they may not need to be highlighted. *“Characteristics”: physical description of the subject, including hair/eye color, tattoos, etc. *“Clothing and accessories”: describing the clothing and personal items an individual was found with or wore when they disappeared. Please use a bullet list for the same reason as the “characteristics” section. *"Sources": listing where the information for the article was obtained **Formerly known as "links" but has been changed to be more inclusive for inline citations to support major details about a case. Sources *Be sure to use the templates available for sources such as NCMEC, NamUs, etc. * Other websites can be sourced by adding the URL enclosed by a left and right bracket. Naming the source in the link can be typed just before the right bracket, with a space to separate it from the URL. *Experienced users could also use inline citations. **Only available to include via source mode. Be sure to enclose a named URL between reference tags, appearing as "Unidentified Wiki" **In order for a reference to appear on the visible portion of the page, “” must appear below the list of sources. **It is also recommended to use proper citation formatting (MLA), which can be entered in various websites to be copied for referencing an article. **Inline citations can be important to verify a major detail of a case, such as the manner of death. *Using inline citations and footnotes will interfere with each other, so only use one or the other. *If you wish to add footnotes (to clarify pronunciation or a disputed element in the case, use the same tag for inline citations. **If using footnotes, please create another section beneath “Sources” titled “Footnotes” with beneath it.